Ariella's tale
by Zoroarkhunter
Summary: Within the movie, you all saw as a clueless store clerk helped the dreaded wishmaster. Here is a tale for what happened


Ariella  
was bored. She normally worked in ladies wear - teen fashions, but today one of  
the men's' sales assistants had called in sick and she had been drafted in at  
short notice to cover. Not only that, but she had been put in suits. Suits! The  
only men interested in buying suits (and there were not many of them) were  
business types, or old fogeys near retirement age. Until he had turned up and  
asked to see the latest and most fashionable range, money no object. He had  
been charming and clearly had an eye for her. Now she was hovering around  
outside one of the changing rooms, inside which her handsome customer was  
changing into the very expensive suit which she had selected for him.

As she waited Ariella glanced at her reflection in the full-length mirror and  
could not help admiring what she saw. She took out a compact and made a few  
adjustments to her make-up, concluding by running her hands through the mass of  
long black ringlets which framed her exquisite coffee-toned complexion. Just  
then, she heard a faint noise behind her and caught a slight movement in the  
glass.

"How's it look?" she asked, without turning around.

"You tell me," invited the customer.

The girl turned round and her eyes travelled the length of him as he adjusted  
the shirt collar and smiled at her. For a moment she was genuinely lost for  
words.

"Wow!" was all she could find to say.

"I'm glad you approve," he responded.

"Um, do you want to try something else?" the sales girl asked,  
recovering her wits and remembering her training. "Different style, maybe?  
Tighter?"

The last suggestion was more in hope than expectation and he turned it down  
quickly.

"Oh no," he replied. "I don't like feeling confined. Had enough  
of that."

The sales girl smiled, showing a perfect set of teeth, dazzling white against  
the background of her coppery skin.

"Okay then," she said. "Follow me."

The customer smiled.

"Pleasure," he said.

Still smiling, the girl glanced over her shoulder as she led the way over to  
the till. She would receive a good commission from this sale, so who cared if  
he was undressing her with his eyes, as he quite blatantly was.

A sly smile played around the customer's mouth as he followed her, his eyes  
taking in the fluid movements of her body, and in particular her hips, with a  
gaze that bordered on the lascivious. She cast another coquettish look over her  
shoulder before slipping behind the counter and turning to smile at him again.

"Now, will this be cash or charge, Mr., er..." she began.

"Demerest," he supplied smoothly. "Nathaniel Demerest. Call me  
Nathaniel."

She giggled. For some reason she felt quite like a little girl.

"Okay, Nathaniel," she said. "Cash, or charge?"

"Which would you prefer?" he teased.

She giggled again, clasped her hands and pretended to give the matter some  
thought.

"I don't know," she said. "Cash?"

"Done," he replied.

There was a very faint low, rumbling echo, as if of distant thunder. As it died  
away the girl felt a strange sensation in her bosom.

"Oh!" she gasped, looking down and clutching at her breasts. To her astonishment,  
a little wad of dollar bills had seemingly just materialized in her cleavage.  
She drew it out and gazed doubtfully at the handsome stranger, who was smiling  
at her with the air of a conjurer having performed a simple trick.

"This is my first day in your world, Ariella," he offered, as if by  
way of explanation for this miraculous occurrence, and clearly having read her  
name from the badge which was pinned to her top. "I am pleased to see  
beauty is a constant. Does it bother you, knowing that your beauty will fade?  
That your looking glass will, day-by-day, tell you a long and unhappy  
story?"

Ariella was not sure how to respond to this.

"Well, I mean, that's life, right?" she ventured. "It happens to  
all of us, like it or not."

"It doesn't have to, Ariella," the stranger said, the beginnings of  
another smile playing around his lips. "Ask! Ask, and see what happens.  
Ask for an end to change. An end to decay. Say, I wish to be beautiful  
forever."

Ariella just gazed at him. His words were like honey, dripping from a pot. As  
if in a trance, she repeated the words he had suggested.

"I wish to be beautiful forever," she breathed softly.

Once again, there was a low rumbling echo, audible only to her. The djinn  
smiled an evil smile.

"Pleasure doing business with you," he said, turning away to leave  
the store.

Time passed. Another customer walked through the department, looking around as  
if seeking assistance. She passed quite close by Ariella's till, but there was  
no-one in attendance, except for a rather lifelike mannequin, with shiny,  
coffee-toned skin and a mass of dark ringlets framing it's pretty face, wearing  
the same pale blue top and black trousers that the missing shop girl had been  
wearing. The customer did not notice that the mannequin was wearing a name  
badge like the ones worn by all the shop staff, nor did she read the name which  
was on it: "Ariella"!

Ariella had no idea what had happened to her. The last thing she had felt was a  
kind of tingling sensation throughout her body, followed by numbness and a  
sense of stiffness and total immobility, but then she could scarcely have  
foreseen her sudden and complete transformation into a construct of solid,  
shiny plastic! She could neither move nor speak. She had no sense of feeling  
anywhere throughout her body, no sense of smell, or of hearing. She did not  
properly appreciate that she could at least still see until the lady customer  
who was seeking assistance chanced to come into her field of view. It was the  
only sense left to her. She rolled her eyes desperately in their sockets, it  
being the only movement she was capable of.

The customer stared hard at the Ariella-mannequin, confused as to just what  
this inert figure was doing standing behind the counter. Ariella stared back,  
but did not reply. She could not. Her ruby lips were parted in a slight  
"Oh", allowing a glimpse of her pearly white teeth, but no sound  
would ever again escape them.

It was some hours later before the djinn returned to collect her soul.

Relegated now to the stockroom, Ariella stood naked in the company of two or  
three conventional mannequins. She guessed that she had only spent a few  
minutes behind the counter in the menswear department before she had been  
discovered by the floor-walker, Mr. Symes, although at the time it had seemed  
like hours. In spite of her predicament she had enjoyed watching his obvious  
confusion, although it might have been even more rewarding had she been able to  
hear what he had said as he had tried to account for her appearance. She  
recalled that there were supposed to be no female mannequins in this part of  
the store. She wondered her boss's thoughts might have been. He was not noted  
for his imagination, but even so surely he would not simply have thought that  
she had placed one of the ordinary mannequins behind the counter and dressed it  
up as herself, so that she could go and do, what? Have a smoke? Powder her  
nose? Not that it would have made the slightest difference to her in her new  
form if by some miracle he had managed to work out what had really happened to  
her!

She had suffered the indignity of being undressed by two of her former  
colleagues, before being loaded onto a trolley and wheeled in here. On the way  
she had caught sight of herself in a mirror and to her horror what she had seen  
did not exactly displease her. She certainly made an attractive mannequin and  
the vain side of her being was rather looking forward to being put out on  
display again.

She remembered the words the djinn had tricked her into saying: "I wish to  
be beautiful forever." Well, it looked as if that wish had come true,  
assuming that her transformation was permanent and, since she had clearly  
become mixed up in something supernatural, it was probably safe to assume that  
it was.

It was at this point, as she silently contemplated her fate in the stockroom,  
that the djinn did in fact return, but all Ariella heard was a sound like the  
rushing wind, accompanied by the most excruciating pain as her soul was quite  
literally wrenched from her mannequinised body. Her eyes rolled in their  
sockets one last time before they glazed over and became lifeless plastic, like  
the rest of her. Then her bodiless soul was in the domain of the djinn and she  
began to experience true terror.


End file.
